1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an electronic apparatus including a plurality of processors, and more particularly to an electronic apparatus including a plurality of processors and a disk storage device that is shared by the processors.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a variety of electronic apparatus, such as a video recorder, a TV and a network device, have been developed as so-called information appliances. Not only in computer systems but also in these electronic apparatuses, a system architecture including a plurality of processors has begun to be adopted in order to efficiently execute various functions.
Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 5-216802 discloses a dual port hard disk that has two ports. The dual port hard disk has two ports ch1 and ch2 that can independently be accessed by different CPUs.
In a system including two CPUs that execute different operating systems, if the CPUs are configured to be able to independently access the hard disk, a competition for access to the hard disk occurs and it becomes difficult to keep consistency in data between file systems of the operating systems.
If the operating system that is executed by one of the CPUs breaks down, this CPU would erroneously continue to occupy the hard disk, leading to such a danger that the other CPU is unable to access the hard disk.